I’ve been interested in start-ups for a while now. So when my friend forwarded me an email several days ago with a link to an application for becoming an advisor for the Harvard Innovation Lab I was immediately interested. The more I read the more I liked how this was structured. Basically, you fill out a simple form detailing a little bit about your professional experience and then provide the link to your LinkedIn account. Application done! In two weeks you know if you’ve been allowed into the database and then students can start requesting advice. After that it’s up to you to decide how much interaction you want. Harvard has down three things beautifully here: 1) minimizing effort of applying, 2) letting students get targeted advice rather than just searching the web and cold calling, and 3) letting advisors decide how much interaction they’ll have.
Now, as an assistant professor I won’t be sending in my application – it’s better to focus on my research, get tenure, and then start something like this at Penn State. Nevertheless, I wanted to share. With any luck one of you will apply and help out one of the groups.